At the age of eight, Zijo Ribic experienced one of the most horrifying tragedies a person could endure. In July 1992, his parents, six sisters, and two-year-old brother were killed by Serbian paramilitaries in the village of Skocic, near Zvornik in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The unit responsible, known as Simini Chetnici, also brutalized and raped one of his sisters before she died. Today, at 42 years old, Ribic is one of the few witnesses to this atrocity. His younger sister remains missing, her body still unrecovered, and the perpetrators have never faced justice.
Ribic survived the massacre by playing dead after being shot and stabbed. The attackers had dug a grave in advance and threw him into it alongside the bodies of his family members. He lay there, bleeding and silent, until the paramilitaries left. Only then did he gather the strength to climb out of the pit. He walked through the fields until he was discovered by two Serbian soldiers. When the Simini Chetnici later demanded his return, the soldiers refused to hand him over, possibly saving his life in the process.
The failure of justice
In 2018, after eight years of legal proceedings, the Belgrade Court of Appeals failed to deliver justice for the victims of Skocic. The court ruled that there was no proof of individual criminal liability for the murders of 28 Roma civilians in Skocic, Malesic, and Setic. While it acknowledged that the paramilitary unit had committed sexual abuse and looting, it did not convict anyone. Ribic described the verdict as a message that Roma were not recognized as human beings.
A forgotten war
Other atrocities took place in the settlements of Sase and Perici, as well as in the towns of Foca and Bijeljina. Many Roma were also killed during the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, primarily because they were Muslim. Their deaths were only later identified through research into victims’ surnames, revealing the extent of the persecution.
A full study documenting the suffering of Roma during the war in Bosnia was published only last year, focusing on the Podrinje region where Skocic is located. The research was partly led by Ribic and the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre. It confirmed that Roma had faced decades of neglect and exclusion from historical narratives of the war. As one of the most marginalized communities in the region, their wartime experience is still largely overlooked.
A story that must be told
Ribic’s story is now being shared in a book titled I Do Not Hate: The Story of Zijo, written by Andrea Rizza Goldstein and published in Croatian, Roma, English, and German. The book was officially launched in Tuzla on July 13. The title, as Ribic explained, reflects his decision to reject hatred and instead judge people by their actions. He described how he witnessed both the worst and the best among Serbs during the conflict—some tried to kill him, while others rescued him.
Before the massacre, the Ribic family had fled their home in Skocic to escape the early wave of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992. They returned thinking they had no reason to fear, only to be murdered on the day they came back. Today, Ribic continues to advocate for the Roma community, insisting that their wartime suffering must not be forgotten or left untold.